A Difference of Darkness
by Inkspace
Summary: A medical diagnosis catalyzes the slow, steady onset of years of inner decay.  An alternate take on Javert's suicide.   This is one from the vaults...


_A/N: An odd little piece I wrote waaay back in the late 90s. I've never posted this before, and I have many criticisms of my teen self's rather purple and overwrought writing, to be sure, but I never completely forgot this weird little one-shot (though I also don't feel sufficiently compelled to rewrite it). It is, I suppose, a somewhat (very?) AU take on Javert's suicide, in which self-destruction is triggered by the threat of physical weakness. Javert's blindness to his own humanity kills him, in the novel... but what if that blindness were more than a metaphor?_

* * *

"There is nothing to be done? Nothing?"

"I've told you that already."

"I can pay you anything, anything at all. I was told you were the best."

"Even if I am that, I am no second Messiah, Inspector."

Javert's face reddened and he pushed up from the bench. He swatted aside the hand of the doctor, which firmly held a mirror that had reflected Javert's traitorous green eyes back at him.

"How long?"

"I've told you that already too, sir!"

"And I'd like you to tell me again."

"I don't know." The doctor turned away, his skin reddening as well. His hands were clasped behind his back. "It could be months, it could be years, but believe me when I say the process does not stop."

"Not until it's complete, you mean."

The doctor set the mirror down on the table and he ran his fingers tightly through his hair. He turned back to Javert.

"Inspector, I'm sorry, but that's life. That is the way it works. Things die. Our bodies cease to function. The parts go one at a time, or they quit all at once. And different parts are first for different people. You're lucky, inspector, for whether or not you are willing to admit it to yourself, it could be far, far worse . . ."

"Maybe I'll be shot first."

"Maybe. But then you'll be dead, monsieur. And that darkness is really and truly complete."

Javert was reminded again of the nauseating chill that had taken hold of him at his first discovery of his trouble. He had ignored it, for practice told him that ignored problems go away. Perhaps he had been simply avoiding the confirmation of diagnosis. He had only known for one week. Things seemed already to be worsening, though he wondered if his mind exaggerated or diminished the truth.

He grabbed his greatcoat from the coat-tree by the door. His voice was flat. "I'm leaving. Send me an invoice through the prefecture. And good day."

The doctor simply shook his head at some silent conclusion. Javert slammed the door behind him as he left.

.

"I wanted a choice!"

Javert grabbed the chair by its back and smashed it against the wall. Immediately the voice in the back of his mind criticized him for the childishness of the act, but he was in no state of mind to listen. Destruction was petty, and it was not gratifying, but it was all he could do.

His dreams had turned blacker in their nature, even before his knowledge of this demise. There he saw visions of himself wandering in an empty field under a starry night sky. Alone, he was washed of his self, his past, his ideals, and his responsibilities. He would rest there, and he would not think, not at all. And he would never come back to this life. He would stay always, in true love with the open sea of sky.

He could not hide these dreams of death from their creator.

His home was stale, and the furniture stood like so many fossils of the unchanging years. The air was dry, and there was dust in dimming sunbeams that pointed their pale fingers at him. Only the corpse of the wood and reed chair, lying in dry slabs and tufts on the parquet floor, seemed to question him. He had kept this place free of questioning memories, but here a fresh one lay before him, beneath the dust of plaster that had already begun to settle over it.

He dropped the wooden piece that his fingers sorely held. It hit the floor with a remarkable and high-pitched ring, like that of a bell sounding the vespers.

.

The words of the doctor sang in their preaching voice, sang of darkness, this night. The lamps of the Pont Notre Dame were bleary before him as he walked to its apex. This time he did not try futilely to blink away the fog in his eyes. A choice? He had a choice. It was one darkness or another, and it was all the same to him. Or was it? He looked up to the sky above him, and its love seemed far truer than a love of dusty places that were too frightened to be home, truer than the promise of reports written and filed and lost to memory on the morrow. One love could last years, and the other could last for one moment or eternity, the difference he had yet to discover.

He looked over the parapet to the sky's reflection below. There was to be darkness in life or in death.

But there was a difference in favour of one option. For one darkness held stars.


End file.
